Captive Gods

Kwame Anthony Appiah is the Silver Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University. His books include The Ethics of Identity, Lines of Descent: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity, The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity, and As If: Idealization and Ideals. He writes the weekly “Ethicist” column for the New York Times Magazine.

“Appiah asks us to think more carefully about what we mean when we call something a religion. . . . Among the writers who might serve as a guide through this difficult terrain, Appiah stands out for both his lucidity in exposition and his sure-footed style.”—Peter E. Gordon, New York Review of Books“Thoughtful and entertaining.”—Dominic Green, Wall Street Journal“An accessible, readable book that exhibits deep erudition and extensive learnedness worn lightly. Appiah has an eye for raising the biggest questions about human nature and social existence.”—Angie Heo, University of Chicago“In this elegant, witty, and often brilliant book, Anthony Appiah explores the fundamental significance of religion for modern development of the very idea of societies. The notion that there might be many religions to be explored comparatively shaped thinking of societies in similar plurality, exploring how religions gave them distinctive categories of thought and culture, how individuals were shaped by and dependent on these contexts, and what happened when they lost their grip.This is a rich and valuable work for all who would understand religion, social science, and modernity itself.”—Craig Calhoun, Arizona State University and Princeton University“In this characteristically brilliant and learned book, Anthony Appiah has given us a crucial account of the emergence of disciplines in which we seek to uncover how we form and reform our beliefs and values. It is a stunning and urgent inquiry—a masterpiece of intellectual history—and it could not arrive at a better time.”—Jorie Graham, author of To 2040 and [To] The Last [Be] Human“In Captive Gods, Appiah builds an incisive intellectual history of theories of religion and society through the minds and worlds of four giants. We see how the concepts of ‘religion’ and ‘society’ co-created each other in the early twentieth century. This is an exquisite work of reflection as we rethink those captive gods, thundering in our own time.”—Laurie L. Patton, president, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and author, Who Owns Religion? Scholars and Their Publics in the Late Twentieth Century